Ismail Akwei is an international journalist, communications and media consultant, editor, writer, human rights advocate, pan-Africanist, tech enthusiast, history fanatic and a lover of arts and culture. He has worked with multinational media companies across the continent and has over a decade's experience in journalism. He is currently the editor of face2faceafrica.com.

It was a successful hackathon for Senegalese cyber security consultant and researcher, Amat Cama, who won a total of $375,000 in cash for exposing bugs in the Tesla Model 3 car and other products in Vancouver, Canada.

Amat Cama and teammate were crowned Master of the Pwn for 2019 and they won the largest share of the $900,000 on offer by the organizers, Zero Day Initiative (ZDI), who paid $545,000 during the entire event for 19 bugs.

All the vulnerabilities exploited have been reported to vendors who have been given 90 days to release patches before Zero Day Initiative (ZDI) can disclose details of the most interesting vulnerabilities.

Amat Cama, popularly known as Acez, is an alumnus of Northeastern University in Boston where he graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics and Computer Science in 2014. He has worked with several cybersecurity firms in the United States including VSR and Qualcomm as a Security Engineer.

It all started in Dakar, Senegal for Cama who attended the Enko Waca International School (formerly West African College of the Atlantic) – a bilingual, secular and mixed institution that opened in 1996 in Ouakam. He studied Physics, Mathematics, Economics, French, English and Spanish and then graduated in 2010 with an International Baccalaureate.

In Dakar, he taught children at the S.O.S Kids’ Village and Talibou Dabo Center before getting admission to the Northeastern University where he was a member of the Cyber Defense Team and the Capture the Flag (CTF) Team. CTF is a computer security competition designed to attack and defend computer systems.

The avid CTF player was part of the Shellphish CTF team that took part in the DARPA Cyber Grand Challenge as well as a number of other competitions.

Amat Cama moved to Beijing City in 2017 after leaving Qualcomm to take up the job of Senior Security Researcher at the Beijing Chaitin Technology Co., Ltd. He left after eight months to work as an independent security researcher and consultant with an immense interest in hacking contests which are very lucrative.

The certified offensive security wireless professional with sharp reverse engineering, penetration testing and programming skills has won several awards in contests including the 2016 Hall of Fame prize at Geekpwn Shanghai for his demo of a remote exploit against the Valve Source engine.

In 2017, he successfully demonstrated a baseband exploit against the Samsung Galaxy S8 at Mobile Pwn2Own in Tokyo as an individual contestant. In the 2018 Pwn2Own contest in Tokyo, Amat Cama and his teammate were crowned Master of Pwn after winning over $200,000.